(no subject)
This is the thing that Liz goaded me into writing today for her entertainment since there was nothing on tv.
You could call this a crossover. But let's get real, it's FACT.
Eames "eased" into the art crime world in a rather spectacular fashion. By forging panels from The Amber Room. This was actually just a lark on his part since he needed to brush up on sculpting. But all things being as they are, his rep was made by this scam.
Rusty Ryan ever-so-subtly introduces himself six months later when Eames is in Brussels for a dream job.
"Excuse me," Rusty says around a couple frites he's got stuffed in his mouth. He's just bumped and lifted Eames right on the sidewalk in front of his hotel. The cheeky bugger.
"I'll have my wallet back. Nice form, but points off for hitting the one and only mark in this crowd that can recognize the art." Eames holds out his hand and Rusty smiles wide wide like the sky opening up after a storm. Eames narrows his eyes. He knows a pro when he is nearly sexually assaulted by one on a street corner.
"Rusty." He wipes salt and oil off his fingers onto a linen handkerchief and sticks his hand out. They're so close Eames has to step back to take his hand. He marks the move.
"As in Ryan I presume?"
The laughter sounds spontaneous and not-at-all calculated.
*
Rusty's a smooth operator, but some of his friends are class A fuck ups.
"This Basher fellow," Eames says to Rusty over Drambuie in Monte Carlo. "I fear he will come to no good end."
Rusty ducks his head and laughs. "Blow his own head off. Want in on the pool?"
Eames learned immediately that nothing Rusty says is a joke and that everything he says is a joke at the same time. He's a throw-back sort of con man, a gentleman most of the time but ruthless if you threaten something he values. Someone he values. Eames's never seen him with a firearm, but he has no doubt he can handle one efficiently if reluctantly.
"So," Rusty clicks the ice in his glass meaningfully. "Arthur."
Eames laughs and shakes his head at Rusty's dimples. "I don't think so, mate. You show me yours first, how did you take up with someone who actually got nicked?"
Rusty's body language stays fluid and open. He pats Eames on the back, like he's fond. But his eyes are hard at the corners and he shakes his head once firmly. Eames already knows anyway.
*
Working with Rusty's crew is mostly a hobby for Eames. He doesn't do any field work and he limits his liability by mostly avoiding any contact with Rusty's mates. Their capers are Rube Goldbergs of crime and Eames enjoys the madcapped antics bits. He likes the stories, even the ones that aren't true. Maybe especially those.
"I assume you're aware that your new acquaintances are buffoons?" Arthur snaps the clip into his USP Tactical and cuts his eyes at him.
"Tell me the truth, Arthur, your hobby is stalking me." Arthur cracks a half smile. "See, this is where we differ--one of the many many ways we differ--you spend your free time courting me through watching my every move. Rather like a young version of Batman. While I prefer to fritter away my life with the rough and tumble criminal element while high on the fumes from paint thinner. To each his own."
"You realize you just compared me to Batman?" Arthur doesn't quite preen, but he does straighten his French cuffs.
"It's apt." Eames lets him have his moment since it makes him hard when Arthur comes over all deadly, his gun in his hand and his face inscrutable.
*
While it's not every day that someone darkens Eames's doorstep with a bullet wound and a prayer on their lips, it's not unheard of. Rusty has the good grace to be chagrined about it.
"I was in a tight spot," he says in his understated, concise way.
"This I gleaned." Eames pulls the suture through his skin and winds the thread around the hemostats. The wound's a through and through on his left shoulder. Eames has a scar from a similar wound, but his was created by a much higher caliber round that left a good portion of his blood in the sand in Afghanistan. Eames deftly threads the curved needle and pulls efficiently at the thread, knotting, cutting, moving down the wound on Rusty's in-drawn breaths. Rusty leans his face on his good arm hunched over Eames's kitchen table, his tattoos faded at the edges, old and cheap. Eames can easily imagine what they would feel like under his tongue.
Twenty neat stitches ladder just below Rusty's shoulder blade when Eames ties the last one off. He strips his undershirt off then the gloves and pitches them both in the sink where he scrubs off blood and betadine from his arms and torso.
They share a half a bottle of whiskey, Rusty wearing his tailored mourning dove grey trousers splattered with brown blood and a plain white dress shirt of Eames's. Eames doesn't bother to put a shirt back on after cleaning himself up.
"Army?" Rusty asks.
"Marines." Eames answers.
Rusty tips his chin towards him. "Sometimes I'm a fuck up."
"At least you have a decent reason to be, unlike most people." This pulls a half-smile from Rusty. "If a slim man about my height shows up brandishing a firearm, the safeword is hippopotamus."
Rusty's laughter is frayed at the edges, but it's bright. "You must be great on a con." He's clearly drunk.
"Oh, only the best, turtledove. Only the best." He smiles ironically, but Rusty's not buying the supposed self-deprecation; he stares back with the kind of recognition in his eyes that Eames has learned is a calling card for men like them.
*
Rusty whistles when Eames dramatically yanks the drop cloth off of his latest baby. He approaches the canvas pulling on his bottom lip and scrutinizing it from different angles. "The brush work," he says pointing at the impasto.
"Yes, a bit of a speciality, really." Eames winks.
"I don't know, Rembrandt?" Rusty lifts an eyebrow.
Eames had given this a lot of thought. "He's greedy enough that this should appeal. Who doesn't want to discover an unknown Rembrandt? He'll fall for it. I'm certain." He is.
Rusty crosses his arms over his chest to survey the painting again. He brushes a thumb over his bottom lip, pulls a packet of Skittles out of the pocket of his blazer. "Ok, we run the Rembrandt."
They do. It goes off without a hitch.
Arthur calls three days later. "CNN isn’t low profile."
Eames laughs and blows on his tea. "Precisely accurate as always."
"I wouldn't mind one for my bathroom." Arthur's been drinking or taken a xanax, his vowels slither out of the phone. If Eames were a different man, he would press this advantage, but he knows that if Arthur is appealing to chemicals he has a damned good reason. He won't ask, because that's vorboten.
"That can be arranged. But you strike me as more of a Bacon aficionado." Changing the subject isn't hard when Arthur is like this, pliant.
"Miro, actually." Which, of course, Eames knows. He glances at the canvas turned towards the wall, the painting that riots with the quirky squiggles and loops of Eames's own subconscious.
"It's sloppy." This is the worst insult Arthur can hurl. Eames feels it in his fillings.
"Why thank you for your critique, Arthur. I will file it away with all the previous criticism." He hangs up. "Fuck you," he says into the silence, because he shouldn't have let Arthur's disapproval get under his skin so easily. He curses both of them at the same time.
*
One day Rusty's just gone, off the map. Eames figures this is linked to the slinky brunette cop that Rusty's been tempting fate with. They're all broken in this line of work, they wouldn't chase adrenaline and court death otherwise. Rusty and his associates are the brighter side of this life, full of elan and joie de vivre, something that Eames needed to remember that crime is fun. They're not stone cold killers like some people he knows, but they're still shady crooks, making them more or less unreliable.
The next job he's on with Arthur takes a rather bizarre twist. "Let me ask this explicitly, in the first layer of the dream we're con men running a ridiculously elaborate game that involves the mark realizing he's asleep?"
"Yes," Arthur smirks. "I think you have a suitable character that you can don."
Eames laughs with his entire body tipping his chair back on two legs. "I might do."
In the dream Eames wears Rusty and Rusty wears a black silk suit with an open collar. Arthur side-eyes him. "Is everyone you know better dressed than you? Even the guttersnipes?"
"Guttersnipes?" Rusty's clear consonants flutter out of Eames's mouth. "You're precious sometimes," he says in his own voice.
Arthur is outwardly as unimpressed as ever, but Eames knows him only too well not to read the amused set of his shoulders.
They are suitably brilliant, as ever.
IDK, Y'ALL, I HAVE GONE 'ROUND THE BEND.
You could call this a crossover. But let's get real, it's FACT.
Eames "eased" into the art crime world in a rather spectacular fashion. By forging panels from The Amber Room. This was actually just a lark on his part since he needed to brush up on sculpting. But all things being as they are, his rep was made by this scam.
Rusty Ryan ever-so-subtly introduces himself six months later when Eames is in Brussels for a dream job.
"Excuse me," Rusty says around a couple frites he's got stuffed in his mouth. He's just bumped and lifted Eames right on the sidewalk in front of his hotel. The cheeky bugger.
"I'll have my wallet back. Nice form, but points off for hitting the one and only mark in this crowd that can recognize the art." Eames holds out his hand and Rusty smiles wide wide like the sky opening up after a storm. Eames narrows his eyes. He knows a pro when he is nearly sexually assaulted by one on a street corner.
"Rusty." He wipes salt and oil off his fingers onto a linen handkerchief and sticks his hand out. They're so close Eames has to step back to take his hand. He marks the move.
"As in Ryan I presume?"
The laughter sounds spontaneous and not-at-all calculated.
*
Rusty's a smooth operator, but some of his friends are class A fuck ups.
"This Basher fellow," Eames says to Rusty over Drambuie in Monte Carlo. "I fear he will come to no good end."
Rusty ducks his head and laughs. "Blow his own head off. Want in on the pool?"
Eames learned immediately that nothing Rusty says is a joke and that everything he says is a joke at the same time. He's a throw-back sort of con man, a gentleman most of the time but ruthless if you threaten something he values. Someone he values. Eames's never seen him with a firearm, but he has no doubt he can handle one efficiently if reluctantly.
"So," Rusty clicks the ice in his glass meaningfully. "Arthur."
Eames laughs and shakes his head at Rusty's dimples. "I don't think so, mate. You show me yours first, how did you take up with someone who actually got nicked?"
Rusty's body language stays fluid and open. He pats Eames on the back, like he's fond. But his eyes are hard at the corners and he shakes his head once firmly. Eames already knows anyway.
*
Working with Rusty's crew is mostly a hobby for Eames. He doesn't do any field work and he limits his liability by mostly avoiding any contact with Rusty's mates. Their capers are Rube Goldbergs of crime and Eames enjoys the madcapped antics bits. He likes the stories, even the ones that aren't true. Maybe especially those.
"I assume you're aware that your new acquaintances are buffoons?" Arthur snaps the clip into his USP Tactical and cuts his eyes at him.
"Tell me the truth, Arthur, your hobby is stalking me." Arthur cracks a half smile. "See, this is where we differ--one of the many many ways we differ--you spend your free time courting me through watching my every move. Rather like a young version of Batman. While I prefer to fritter away my life with the rough and tumble criminal element while high on the fumes from paint thinner. To each his own."
"You realize you just compared me to Batman?" Arthur doesn't quite preen, but he does straighten his French cuffs.
"It's apt." Eames lets him have his moment since it makes him hard when Arthur comes over all deadly, his gun in his hand and his face inscrutable.
*
While it's not every day that someone darkens Eames's doorstep with a bullet wound and a prayer on their lips, it's not unheard of. Rusty has the good grace to be chagrined about it.
"I was in a tight spot," he says in his understated, concise way.
"This I gleaned." Eames pulls the suture through his skin and winds the thread around the hemostats. The wound's a through and through on his left shoulder. Eames has a scar from a similar wound, but his was created by a much higher caliber round that left a good portion of his blood in the sand in Afghanistan. Eames deftly threads the curved needle and pulls efficiently at the thread, knotting, cutting, moving down the wound on Rusty's in-drawn breaths. Rusty leans his face on his good arm hunched over Eames's kitchen table, his tattoos faded at the edges, old and cheap. Eames can easily imagine what they would feel like under his tongue.
Twenty neat stitches ladder just below Rusty's shoulder blade when Eames ties the last one off. He strips his undershirt off then the gloves and pitches them both in the sink where he scrubs off blood and betadine from his arms and torso.
They share a half a bottle of whiskey, Rusty wearing his tailored mourning dove grey trousers splattered with brown blood and a plain white dress shirt of Eames's. Eames doesn't bother to put a shirt back on after cleaning himself up.
"Army?" Rusty asks.
"Marines." Eames answers.
Rusty tips his chin towards him. "Sometimes I'm a fuck up."
"At least you have a decent reason to be, unlike most people." This pulls a half-smile from Rusty. "If a slim man about my height shows up brandishing a firearm, the safeword is hippopotamus."
Rusty's laughter is frayed at the edges, but it's bright. "You must be great on a con." He's clearly drunk.
"Oh, only the best, turtledove. Only the best." He smiles ironically, but Rusty's not buying the supposed self-deprecation; he stares back with the kind of recognition in his eyes that Eames has learned is a calling card for men like them.
*
Rusty whistles when Eames dramatically yanks the drop cloth off of his latest baby. He approaches the canvas pulling on his bottom lip and scrutinizing it from different angles. "The brush work," he says pointing at the impasto.
"Yes, a bit of a speciality, really." Eames winks.
"I don't know, Rembrandt?" Rusty lifts an eyebrow.
Eames had given this a lot of thought. "He's greedy enough that this should appeal. Who doesn't want to discover an unknown Rembrandt? He'll fall for it. I'm certain." He is.
Rusty crosses his arms over his chest to survey the painting again. He brushes a thumb over his bottom lip, pulls a packet of Skittles out of the pocket of his blazer. "Ok, we run the Rembrandt."
They do. It goes off without a hitch.
Arthur calls three days later. "CNN isn’t low profile."
Eames laughs and blows on his tea. "Precisely accurate as always."
"I wouldn't mind one for my bathroom." Arthur's been drinking or taken a xanax, his vowels slither out of the phone. If Eames were a different man, he would press this advantage, but he knows that if Arthur is appealing to chemicals he has a damned good reason. He won't ask, because that's vorboten.
"That can be arranged. But you strike me as more of a Bacon aficionado." Changing the subject isn't hard when Arthur is like this, pliant.
"Miro, actually." Which, of course, Eames knows. He glances at the canvas turned towards the wall, the painting that riots with the quirky squiggles and loops of Eames's own subconscious.
"It's sloppy." This is the worst insult Arthur can hurl. Eames feels it in his fillings.
"Why thank you for your critique, Arthur. I will file it away with all the previous criticism." He hangs up. "Fuck you," he says into the silence, because he shouldn't have let Arthur's disapproval get under his skin so easily. He curses both of them at the same time.
*
One day Rusty's just gone, off the map. Eames figures this is linked to the slinky brunette cop that Rusty's been tempting fate with. They're all broken in this line of work, they wouldn't chase adrenaline and court death otherwise. Rusty and his associates are the brighter side of this life, full of elan and joie de vivre, something that Eames needed to remember that crime is fun. They're not stone cold killers like some people he knows, but they're still shady crooks, making them more or less unreliable.
The next job he's on with Arthur takes a rather bizarre twist. "Let me ask this explicitly, in the first layer of the dream we're con men running a ridiculously elaborate game that involves the mark realizing he's asleep?"
"Yes," Arthur smirks. "I think you have a suitable character that you can don."
Eames laughs with his entire body tipping his chair back on two legs. "I might do."
In the dream Eames wears Rusty and Rusty wears a black silk suit with an open collar. Arthur side-eyes him. "Is everyone you know better dressed than you? Even the guttersnipes?"
"Guttersnipes?" Rusty's clear consonants flutter out of Eames's mouth. "You're precious sometimes," he says in his own voice.
Arthur is outwardly as unimpressed as ever, but Eames knows him only too well not to read the amused set of his shoulders.
They are suitably brilliant, as ever.
IDK, Y'ALL, I HAVE GONE 'ROUND THE BEND.